Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

palant.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 187 posts

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#151

Post by michaelt »

ucaetano wrote: post #114
nixpulvis wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that an extension was removed. There will always be erroneous attempts at making things safer for users when playing the game of content moderator. The problem is that Google is impossible to talk to, and makes no effort to help when things go wrong. As a current user of gmail this worries me.

> Google is impossible to talk to Talking costs money, a lot of money, far more than computers. It seems that Google One will have paid support, so your problem is solved!

If you’re locked out of the account that paid for support, how do you prove your eligibility for support to get back into it?

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#152

Post by palant »

justinclift wrote: post #15
Boulth wrote: post #2

It's interesting to observe current landscape of app delivery, previously it was just binaries or sources on developer's site now it's shifting to centralized model in the name of protecting users from malicious actors. I wonder if there is a way to have a cookie (developers don't need to worry about random behavior of your centralized owner) and eat it too (fight malware).

Maybe something along the lines of having Firefox/Chrome/etc allowing people to specfiy "extra" extension/addon repos to query? That'd let external places create collections of extensions/addon's, which would probably open things up enough.

Firefox still allows installation from third party websites, they merely require add-ons to be signed by AMO. This allows Mozilla to revoke a signature for malicious add-ons, not sure how often this happens in practice.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#153

Post by yani »

roadbeats wrote: post #148

They took down my bookmarking extension with no notice, replied none of my e-mails. Although @GoogleChrome gives support on Twitter, they completely ignored my and also some user tweets. We had good description, many screenshots and a screencast, our extension is even open source ( https://github.com/kozmos/browser-extensions ). I don't even know the reason why they took it down. I just had to re-publish my extension…

Google is terrible at support. I had to wait 2 months to get my oAuth application reviewed. I had to write an email in all capitals to get their attention.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#154

Post by palant »

bitL wrote: post #37

Isn't that extension going straight against Google's ability to track what users are clicking on, i.e. against their core business? Maybe the warning wording is cumbersome or opaque, but what would the author expect? Company not protecting their turf? The only surprising thing is that they did it in this unimaginative hidden fashion, not fitting their friendly progressive image.

Nowhere in the Chrome Web Store policies does it say: "Extensions aren't allowed to violate Google's business interests." Supposedly, acceptance in CWS depends on user value, and the policies protect the user rather than Google.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#155

Post by palant »

csomar wrote: post #61

> I guess, Mountain View must be moving at extreme speeds, which is why time goes by way faster over there — relativity theory in action. The other way around. The OP must be the one moving at extreme speeds.

If you remember special relativity theory, it's the same thing - merely depends on your point of view. From my point of view, Mountain View is moving. But if you are a Google employee, then I must be moving of course.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#156

Post by palant »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #34

I'm very curious to see how this plays out. Obviously, the reason for banning the extension is that it prevents Google from tracking our clicks (I'm surprised it took them so long!) But they can't clearly spell out the reason as it would make them look bad, so they just used some template and try to sweep it under the carpet. Now that it's on HN it's no longer so easy to ignore, so I'm really curious to see what happ…

No, the reason isn't obvious. The extension wasn't popular enough on Chrome, Google simply wouldn't bother doing anything about it. This might be a trademark issue, the extension's name has "Google" in it - then it's a major messup then, failing to spell out the correct reason. Or maybe it was flagged by some automated tool and whoever checked output of that tool didn't properly validate it. Impossible to tell from the outside.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#157

Post by palant »

majewsky wrote: post #27
AznHisoka wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it kind of frustrating that Google does nothing about extensions tracking your browser history, and quickly takes action against extensions like these. I hope Google has their Cambridge moment soon.

> quickly The "Google search link fix" extension by Wladimir Palant has existed for many years. (Source: I use it in Firefox.)

For reference, the Chrome version was released in January 2017. So - yes, they had plenty of time to object.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#158

Post by ozim »

segmondy wrote: post #44
CryoLogic wrote: post #7

They somehow have the man power to ban your extension in 2 hours and 30 minutes without an explanation as to why, but than when I get a fake copyright claim on my most popular YouTube video somehow it takes three months, 12 emails and I still don't get the ~$900 lost revenue back.

They optimize for their own profit, not yours. ;)

Cannot upvote this enough. People complaining about such things think that "customer is always right" where reality is "customer is always right if he pays enough for us to care". Have some reality check.

Every company does what is in their best interest not particular customer.

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#159

Post by bitL »

mort96 wrote: post #120
threeseed wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surprising thing is that they let the extension exist for so long. Google makes most of their money from ads. If you interfere with that then of course you'll be in trouble.

Then why are there still ad blocking extensions? Wouldn't uBlock Origin interfere way more than this extension?

Maybe it's the next hidden step and this one was just testing the waters for the level of public outcry?

Re: Google to developers: We take down your extension because we can

#160

Post by pgeorgi »

bdcravens wrote: post #59
Animats wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. I don't use a Google account.

That's the thing that makes Google a more challenging beast than Facebook: you don't have to have an account to be an asset for Google, and you likely feed them more data all the time.

All those like buttons on the net can be used by Facebook to create shadow profiles, too.
Post reply on HN